Alternatives to Qualys Community Edition
Free, cloud-based edition of the Qualys security platform for asset discovery and vulnerability assessment. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Qualys Community Edition
Free, cloud-based edition of the Qualys security platform for asset discovery and vulnerability assessment.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Qualys Community Edition.
Nessus
Widely used commercial vulnerability scanner.
Nessus is installed on Windows, macOS or Linux instead of running as a cloud console, and its free Essentials edition is capped at sixteen IP addresses.
OpenVAS
Full-featured open-source vulnerability scanner.
OpenVAS is free open-source software you host yourself on Linux, so scan data stays on your servers, though its community feed lags the paid enterprise feed.
Nuclei
A fast vulnerability scanner driven by YAML templates contributed by thousands of security researchers.
Nuclei is an open-source command-line scanner driven by YAML templates, suited to CI pipelines, but it lacks the asset discovery console and sees only templated vulnerabilities.
Vuls
Assess known vulnerabilities on Linux and FreeBSD systems.
Vuls is a free open-source command-line scanner for Linux and FreeBSD hosts that collects package data without an agent, with no cloud console or web application checks.
Pentest-Tools.com
An online toolkit of vulnerability scanners and penetration testing tools that produces customizable reports.
Pentest-Tools.com is another browser-based commercial service that validates findings with exploits and produces customizable reports, with the full feature set on paid plans.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Qualys Community Edition as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Lansweeper
Network discovery and IT asset inventory platform.
Qualys Community Edition combines asset discovery with vulnerability assessment in a cloud console, but the free edition covers only a small number of IPs and stores scan data with Qualys.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
DefectDojo
An open source, self-hosted vulnerability management platform that collects and tracks findings from security scanners.
Shodan
A search engine that indexes internet-connected devices and the services they expose.
Censys
An internet intelligence platform for searching hosts, services and TLS certificates across the internet.
CIS-CAT Lite
A free tool from the Center for Internet Security that checks systems against CIS Benchmarks.
Trivy
Scan software and infrastructure for known security issues.
OpenSCAP
Open source tools for scanning systems against SCAP security policies and hardening baselines.
